The AIBE asks about eight questions on substantive criminal law, and it has asked about eight in every paper since 2013. The Bar Council's syllabus says 8. On this row, the table is telling the truth.
The interesting question is not how many. It is which code. We counted and classified all 1,900 questions in 19 real AIBE papers, and in the newest one, AIBE XXI of 7 June 2026, this subject split exactly down the middle: four questions on the Indian Penal Code and four on the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
Both codes are on the Bar Council's syllabus, in the same row. Anyone telling you the IPC is finished has not read it.
The short version
- The Bar Council's published syllabus allocates 8 questions, under a heading that names the IPC and the BNS together.
- Across the newest five papers, AIBE XVII to XXI, we counted 42. That is an average of 8.4.
- Across all 19 papers we counted 153, an average of 8.1.
- Every paper from AIBE V in 2013 onwards asked 7, 8 or 9. That is seventeen papers in a row within one question of the published number.
- In AIBE XXI the split was four IPC and four BNS, and we hold all eight of that paper's questions in this subject.
- The two halves ask different things. The IPC questions are about definitions and ingredients. The BNS questions are about punishments and what is new.
What the Bar Council says this subject is worth
The current syllabus is a one page table titled "Syllabus for All India Bar Exam-XXI", published on the official exam site on 2 March 2026. Row 2 reads, exactly as printed:
| Topic / Subject | Questions |
|---|---|
| I. P. C. (Indian Penal Code) & (New) Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita | 8 |
One row. Eight questions. Two codes, joined by an ampersand. The Bar Council has not taken the Indian Penal Code off its syllabus, it has put the Sanhita next to it. The criminal procedure row and the evidence row are built the same way.
The identical row appeared in the AIBE XX syllabus of 27 September 2025. Two exams, same wording.
If you go looking for this yourself, be careful which page you land on. The Bar Council of India's own website carries an AIBE page whose address still ends "aibe-xvii". It prints an older syllabus with the IPC and no Sanhita at all, along with several other things that are no longer true. It is a primary source and it is out of date. The dated PDF on the exam site is the current one.
What 19 real papers actually show
The Bar Council publishes the papers and the official answer keys. It does not publish which question belongs to which subject. So we classified all 1,900 questions in our 19 papers ourselves, reading by hand every question a pattern could not settle. We counted the IPC and the BNS as one subject, because the Bar Council's own row counts them as one.
| Papers | Questions on this subject | Average per paper | Against the stated 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oldest seven, AIBE III to IX (2012 to 2016) | 56 | 8.0 | 0.0 |
| Middle seven, AIBE X to XVI (2017 to 2021) | 55 | 7.9 | -0.1 |
| Newest five, AIBE XVII to XXI (2023 to 2026) | 42 | 8.4 | +0.4 |
| All 19 papers | 153 | 8.1 | +0.1 |
Three eras, and all three sit within 0.4 of the published figure. Now look at it paper by paper, because that is where the real stability shows:
| Paper | Questions on this subject |
|---|---|
| AIBE XXI, 2026 | 8 |
| AIBE XX, 2025 | 9 |
| AIBE XIX, 2024 | 8 |
| AIBE XVIII, 2023 | 9 |
| AIBE XVII, 2023 | 8 |
| AIBE XVI, 2021 | 7 |
| AIBE XV, 2021 | 9 |
| AIBE XIV, 2019 | 8 |
| AIBE XIII, 2018 | 8 |
| AIBE XII, 2018 | 9 |
| AIBE XI, 2017 | 7 |
| AIBE X, 2017 | 7 |
| AIBE IX, 2016 | 8 |
| AIBE VIII, 2015 | 8 |
| AIBE VII, 2014 | 8 |
| AIBE VI, 2014 | 7 |
| AIBE V, 2013 | 7 |
| AIBE IV, 2012 | 4 |
| AIBE III, 2012 | 14 |
Everything from AIBE V onwards is 7, 8 or 9. Seventeen consecutive papers, never more than one question away from what the syllabus promises. The only two papers that miss are both from 2012, and they miss in opposite directions: AIBE III asked 14 and AIBE IV asked 4. The exam settled early and has stayed settled.
Has this changed since the older papers
The count has not. The code has.
Our set straddles the changeover, which is the part nobody else can show you from both sides. Papers up to AIBE XVIII, sat in 2023, ask the Indian Penal Code. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita starts appearing from AIBE XIX in 2024. And the newest paper does not choose.
We hold all eight of the AIBE XXI questions in this subject. Four of them name the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and nothing else: criminal conspiracy under Section 120A, an essential element of theft under Section 378, what is not a mandatory ingredient of abduction under Section 362, and when the right of private defence of the body extends to causing death.
The other four name the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and nothing else: forfeiture of property as a punishment and when it is applied, the current range of punishments for defamation, a new penal measure in the sentencing framework under Section 4, and the provision that brings a definition of a terrorist act into general penal legislation.
Four and four, in a paper sat in June 2026, two years after the new code arrived. That is the answer to "should I still learn the IPC", and it comes from the paper rather than from anybody's opinion.
What actually gets asked
These are real questions from AIBE XXI, quoted exactly as printed. We are quoting them to show their shape, not answering them here.
Pursuant to the definition provided in Section 378 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, which of the following constitutes an essential element of the offence of 'Theft'?
Under the provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, what is the current range of punishments available to a court for the offence of 'Defamation'?
Under which specific provision of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, has the definition of a 'Terrorist Act' been formally integrated into India's general penal legislation for the first time?
Put the eight side by side and the pattern is hard to miss.
The IPC half asks what an offence is made of. The essential element of theft. The ingredient that is not required for abduction. Whether a statement about criminal conspiracy is legally accurate. When private defence stretches as far as killing. These are the questions your LL.B. already trained you for, and three of the four name the section number in the stem.
The BNS half asks about punishment and about novelty. All four are that: what punishment now applies to defamation, when forfeiture of property is used, what new measure Section 4 brings into sentencing, and what has been written into a general penal code for the first time. Not one of them is a plain definition question.
That is a useful thing to know before you open a book, because it tells you which parts of each code are being mined.
What to revise, and what to skip
Keep the IPC. Four of the eight in the most recent paper. It is in the Bar Council's syllabus heading. Dropping it is the most expensive piece of common advice about this exam.
Revise the IPC by ingredients and section numbers. Definitions of the standard offences, what each one requires, and what it does not require. The "which of these is not an ingredient" format punishes half knowledge, because you have to be sure about all four options.
Revise the BNS by punishment and by what is new. Sentencing, the range of punishments for particular offences, and anything the Sanhita introduced that the old code did not have. On our sample the BNS questions live there almost exclusively.
Give it eight questions worth of time. This subject has been stable for seventeen papers. It will not surprise you, and it does not deserve extra hours taken from somewhere else. If you want to know where those hours should go, the Constitution carries the same kind of syllabus row and delivered an average of 13.8 questions across the newest five papers against a stated 10.
What to skip: memorising a conversion table between old and new section numbers. We hold all eight of the AIBE XXI questions in this subject and not one of them asks you to convert an IPC section into its BNS equivalent. That is one paper, so it is evidence rather than proof, but it is complete evidence for that paper and it points away from a large piece of work.
Also skip the two 2012 papers as a guide to weight. AIBE III asked 14 questions here and AIBE IV asked 4. Neither tells you anything about the exam you are sitting.
Which Bare Act to carry
The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita first, and the Indian Penal Code too if you can take both.
Here is the reasoning, and it is different from the reasoning for criminal procedure. In AIBE XXI the two codes split four and four, so neither book covers more questions than the other. What separates them is where your memory is weaker. The IPC questions are the definitions and ingredients you have been learning since your first year, and most people can answer those without opening anything. The BNS questions are about new punishments and new provisions, which nobody has had years to absorb, and which are exactly the kind of thing a clean copy answers in thirty seconds.
So the book earns its place on the BNS side. Carry the Sanhita, carry the Penal Code as well if the bag allows, and do not assume that the BNS makes the IPC unnecessary. The paper does not assume that.
Take clean copies. The Bar Council's Examination Guidelines allow "only BARE ACTS (without notes and comments)", and possession of anything else inside the centre is itself a stated risk, not just using it. The full carry-in position, including the second Bar Council document that softens that rule and the questions no document answers at all, is in what you can carry into the AIBE.
What these numbers do not tell you
- The classification is ours. The Bar Council does not publish one. We rolled the IPC and the BNS into a single count because its own syllabus row does.
- The four and four split is one paper. It is the complete set of this subject's questions in AIBE XXI, which is why we can state it exactly, but it is still one paper out of 19.
- One set per edition. Each AIBE paper is printed in four sets, A to D. We hold one set for each edition, mostly Set A. We cannot show whether the other sets carry the same questions, so we do not claim it.
- No forecast. Nothing here predicts the IPC and BNS mix in AIBE XXII. We will count it when it exists.
Where these facts come from
The syllabus heading is quoted exactly from the Bar Council's Syllabus for All India Bar Exam-XXI, published on the official exam site on 2 March 2026, and identical to the AIBE XX syllabus of 27 September 2025. The carry-in wording is from the Examination Guidelines for AIBE XXI, published 20 February 2026. That the Bar Council of India's own AIBE page is out of date is our own finding, from reading it on 23 September 2026.
The question counts are ours. They come from 19 real AIBE past papers held on munotes, 1,900 questions in total, classified by us and counted on 23 September 2026. The three quoted stems are reproduced exactly as printed, from AIBE XXI questions 29, 48 and 86. The other five in that paper are questions 8, 25, 35, 52 and 74. We have rounded nothing up, and anyone holding the paper can check every count on this page.
What to do next
The next exam is AIBE XXII on 29 November 2026. Registration opened on 19 August 2026 and closes on 27 October 2026.
This subject is eight marks and it is predictable, so the useful test is not whether you know the codes. It is whether you can tell, in the two seconds after reading a stem, which code it is asking about, and reach for the right book. In a paper that mixes them four and four, picking up the wrong one costs you more time than getting the answer wrong costs you marks.
Sit AIBE XXI and watch yourself do it. All 19 AIBE previous year question papers are on munotes as timed practice: 100 questions, a three hour timer, and answers taken from the Bar Council's official keys. Lifetime access to all 19 is Rs 499, paid once.